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March 23, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
12:32
My crazy but true DONKEY story… HEE HAW HEE HAW!
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Welcome to my show.
You know, if you've never lived on a ranch and taken care of ranch animals, you can't really know quite what an experience it is.
I guess it's like if you've had children and you've raised children and people say to you, what's it like raising kids?
And you say, well, it's really, really hard.
You have to take care of them.
And then they reply to you, must be similar to raising a dog, right?
I got a dog.
I know what it's like.
I have a dog.
And you're like, no, it's not that at all.
That's the way I feel about ranch animals, and when people ask me, what's it like raising ranch animals?
Is it like having a petting zoo?
No.
It's not like that at all, and just to give you an example of that, true story, you know, we had a baby donkey, and her name is Hosanna.
And she's a beautiful little donkey.
It was a surprise birth.
I didn't even know the mother was pregnant.
One day, I'm out there.
I'm out walking around in the forest, and I hear one of the donkeys calling, and I go to investigate.
Walk over there, and I do a double take.
It was like, wait a minute, there's not two donkeys here, there's three.
And one of them is really tiny and cute looking.
And I walked over to the baby donkey and it ran right up to me and just like snuggle hugged me.
I got snuggle hugged by a baby donkey, right?
That's pretty cool.
So I guess that part is kind of like a petting zoo.
But then the work begins.
Immediately I'm thinking, oh wow, I have to help keep this baby donkey alive, and I hope it's nursing well.
They're pretty wobbly when they first get up on their forelegs.
They're kind of vulnerable.
There's coyotes out there at night.
We always hear coyotes all around, and I see them occasionally.
We keep our chickens safe from predators, and so now I'm thinking, I've got to keep this baby donkey alive too.
So I ended up...
I had to bring the donkeys over closer to the house part of the ranch because we have different areas fenced off for different ranges of animals.
And the donkeys are usually in the far range so they can keep the coyotes away.
The adult donkeys are really good at stomping on coyotes.
So the coyotes run and that provides like a coyote barrier for the whole farm.
And then we have chickens closer into the house and so the chickens are thereby kept safe from the coyotes by the donkeys.
The coyote stompers.
Anyway, so we brought the donkeys closer to the house because I wanted to be able to keep an eye on this baby donkey, Hosanna.
And wouldn't you know it, like two days into this, when this donkey is literally two or maybe three days old, we get these heavy rains.
And it hadn't rained in six months.
It was actually quite dry in central Texas.
And all of a sudden, this big storm rolls through.
And the storm, of course, drenches, just drenches the whole area with, I kid you not, something like 14 inches of rain in 36 hours.
I mean, like a foot plus of rain just right on the land, you know.
And, of course, this baby donkey is out there just a couple of days old and not really big and meaty like the parents that can handle this kind of weather.
And all of a sudden, you know, this baby donkey is out there shivering because there's wind and there's rain.
And I'm thinking, you know, hypothermia, right?
So I go out and check on this donkey.
It finally occurs to me, like, I think it was 1.30 in the morning, one night when this rain was happening, I was like, Man, this donkey, this baby donkey, I'm kind of worried about this donkey.
I want to make sure it's warm.
So I go out there and I grab it.
Well, I check it out first.
I'm like, yeah, it's shivering.
She is shivering like crazy.
And what am I going to do?
I'm thinking blow dryer, you know, hair dryer.
So I lift up this donkey, which...
Weighs, I don't know, 60, 70 pounds?
I'm not exactly sure, but picking up a donkey and walking around with it is not my favorite activity.
They kick, too, while you're carrying them.
They're kind of kicking, and they have these really long legs.
So I carry this donkey to the barn.
And in the barn, I set it down on its leg, so it's standing there, and I grab a towel, and I start scrubbing its back and scrubbing the water off, and first it's trying to run, you know, and then eventually it stands still and lets me do this, and it's shivering, and I'm thinking, oh my god, I've got to get this donkey warmed up.
So I grab a hair dryer and I start using the hair dryer on it.
And of course that freaks the donkey out at the beginning too.
It tries to bolt.
And I'm trying to hold the donkey with one hand and hold a hair dryer with the other hand.
And by now it's like 2 o'clock in the morning and I'm tired.
You know, I'm thinking I should be sleeping.
Instead I'm blow drying a donkey in my barn.
This is the most unglamorous life ever imaginable.
Other people on Facebook, they have photos of how they're on awesome yachts and cruises and fashion dresses and suits and tuxedos and buffets and fancy.
And I'm like blow drying a donkey in my barn.
This is my life.
So anyway, it takes about a half an hour to blow dry a donkey to a state of dryness.
And that doesn't even cover the ankles and hooves, nor the nose.
I couldn't really blow the donkey's face with the hair dryer.
He did not, or she did not like that.
So I covered the whole back and the neck and the hips and the tops of the legs and the chest and some of the belly.
I got it mostly dry, back to the puffy state, poofy, puffy insulative donkey hair, which is very, very effective.
It works great.
Donkeys are real survivors.
And so now I notice that the mom is out there crying for the baby donkey, because apparently the mom did not see that I took this donkey away.
You know, it's night.
It's raining.
The mama is just hanging out and all of a sudden she's like, where's my donkey?
And I'm thinking, I need to reunite these donkeys because by now the rain has reduced somewhat and I've warmed up the donkey.
It's no longer shivering.
In fact, it's kind of happy, kind of frolicking around the barn a little bit and, you know, really having a good time.
So, I'm thinking I've got to reunite these creatures again.
So I open up the barn doors.
The barn has lights in it.
And I'm thinking, you know, the mom is just going to wander my direction and see the baby donkey.
You know, mission accomplished.
The donkey is going to join the mama.
And now they're together again.
Mission accomplished.
And I can go to sleep.
But of course, that's not what happens.
So the mom, the mama is on the other side of the house, where the house is in between her and the barn.
And she's doing this horrible lost baby donkey cry, which sounds like...
And she, you know, it's the saddest thing you could ever imagine.
And of course, she's doing it right next to our bedroom window.
So there's no chance that we're going to get to go to sleep unless we reunite the baby donkey here, Hosanna, with her mama.
So...
I look at Hosanna and she's just standing there looking at me like, yeah, that was awesome with the hair dryer, man.
You know, let's do that again sometime.
And I'm thinking, you know, this baby donkey is probably not going to make any sounds to attract the mama donkey.
And what are the odds that the mama donkey is just going to wander over here?
Probably nothing.
So I think I need to try to impersonate the baby donkey sound so that the mama will maybe think that's her baby and she'll come running.
And so, you know, I've heard donkeys make their call noises for many years and, you know, cattle and all the different sounds that you hear out on the farm when you live in the country in Texas.
And so I'm thinking, well, I'm just going to try to impersonate the baby donkey.
So I put my hands up to my mother.
And sure enough, sure enough, before long, I hear the mom and the dad come running around the house.
And I see them running kind of parallel to the barn.
They're now crossing in front of the house.
And I think this is awesome.
They're going to see the baby.
My job is done.
But instead, my dogs see them running at night, and they think they're invaders from another planet, aliens in the shape of donkeys.
And my dogs start going, and the donkeys freak out, they don't see the baby, and they run back to the other side of the house.
So I'm standing here in the barn.
Now it's like 2.15 or something.
It's late.
I'm tired.
You know, I'm wet.
I didn't use the hair dryer on myself.
I'm covered in rain.
The donkey's dry, but she's not saying a word.
And the parents just did a lap around my house without claiming their baby, which is standing right here in the light in the barn.
I'm like, man.
So I impersonate the baby donkey again.
And sure enough, the parents are running around the house.
The dogs start barking.
And the donkeys freak out again.
Run around the other side.
The baby's like standing there looking at me.
Like, what?
You expect me to carry you back over there?
I already carried you once tonight and I did the hair dryer on you.
Come on, you owe me.
Make some noise here.
So I do it one more time.
They come running around the house.
And they're like, this is my night in Texas.
The rest of you are out partying at some rave dance party thing.
I don't know what you're doing.
You're having fun.
I'm impersonating baby donkeys.
And eventually, the way I solve this is...
I had to pick up, I had to carry the donkey again.
I finally, I'm like, I'm never going to get to sleep unless I just take this donkey over there.
So I pick it back up.
This time she's kind of liking it now, I guess.
I mean, she's all dry and warm and everything.
And so I pick her up.
I walk over to the other side of the house.
I see the mom and the dad donkeys.
And I set the baby down, and the mama looks at us, and just for fun or something, one last thing goes...
The baby runs over there.
They touch noses.
They sniff each other.
Baby starts nursing.
I'm like, I'm going to bed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm going to bed.
I'm glad you guys are okay.
And sure enough, I slept very well that night, and so did the donkeys, and so did the dogs.
So we've resolved that situation, and that is real life on a real ranch in real rural Texas.
It's not a petting zoo.
It's an adventure.
We could sell tickets to this, man.
Yeah, an e-ticket.
It's the Donkey Encounter.
That's what we'll call it.
Bring your blow dryers.
You'll need them sometime in the middle of the night.
Thanks for listening.
This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger for naturalnews.com.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Health Ranger Report.
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